369 Days into The Last 4000

Several people alluded to an article they'd read recently about avoiding all the end of life issues we see our parents struggle with.  When I think of my mother I'm reminded of the last eighteen months.  While I'm not sure how much I really want or need to remember from all the years before that, I know that the last year and a half pretty much blew.  Ezekiel Emanuel, noted scholar, recently penned an article entitled "Why I hope to Die at 75" in which he laments the extra effort to keep us going, but is really concerned that he does not want to perform at a lower scale.  He states that almost everyone starts to lose their creativity, their gifts and abilities of all sorts at 7.5 decades.

I am a few days into year two after leaving my 27-year gig.  Generally this is feeling pretty good, but Ezekiel did get me thinking which resulted in the calculation ((75-63)*365)+((9/12)*365)= the number of days left before my creativity is gone.  Now in the context of sitting in an office or working on "strategic plans" or "business continuity plans" or "capacity planning" or "system change management" or .... none these is getting me excited at the moment and I've just wasted another few minutes of the remaining of the 4000 or so days before I'm left to be as creative as nothing, or as my kids say...being just a tool.

This was all somewhat alarming so I immediately did 1) the preceding calculation to confirm how little time I
had left (I'm sure there is NOT and iPhone app that pulls your birth date from some public record and starts

a shot clock timer showing your diminishing potential minute and second by second until you turn to mush at 12:01 AM on your 75th birthday) and 2) bought a lottery ticket to fund my remaining time.  Also selected were a few Zombie scratch-offs which won't cover the remaining 4000+ days but could fund the next tire(s) that I blow since it's now been a month without a tire repair or replacement.

The small business did a trade show today and it was quite successful with much cross-marketing and some actual sales.  We feel quite comfortable in the accomplishments within that framework and also for the potential going forward.

Four thousand days:  as I posted in the short version of this nonsense on Facebook it "is time to get cracking" and move the imagery, products and services out of my head into their artistic (although diminishing creative) form.